During renovation of wooden surfaces of old houses, it is normally required to remove several coats of successively painted unsightly cracked and flaking oil- and/or plastic-based paint. Various methods are available for executing this work, wherein the removal of the paint for example can be carried out by means of scraping or grinding, which either implies a great effort of costly manpower or diffusion of ecologically harmful dust and disturbing noise. Heating devices are also utilized in order to burn off paint or rather to soften the paint by means of heating, so that it would be easier to scrape the paint off the wood. A device for such treatment of a surface is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,304,721 by means of which the paint is softened by radiation from a source of infra-red radiation. Thereafter, the paint is immediately removed by means of mechanical treatment of the wooden surface.
The device described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,304,721 has a relatively low weight and is intended to be used as a handheld tool which is easy to handle and its low weight also permits easy mounting on a light and variable suspension device. Although this device operates satisfactorily, it is sensitive to shocks or dropping of the device. In particular, the infrared heat radiation elements, which normally comprise a fragile casing, e.g. glass, surrounding the electric resistance wire, may be damaged or broken if the heating device is hit or in another way mishandled.